Quality and Reliability Engineering

QSF
Quality and Reliability
Engineering
The
QSF option
T
he quality of a product or service is measured by its ability to satisfy a stated
need. To achieve quality, businesses have to make sure that the solutions
provided are appropriate and that the entire organization is working to improve
quality. While quality used to simply consist of a final verification that a product
met specifications, it is now a cross-functional issue involving all partners through
to the end user. Since 1995, the QSF option has been training engineers capable of
assisting businesses and consulting firms implement and improve quality systems,
This includes designing management systems in an integrated context involving all types
of risks (occupational, industrial, economic and environmental), setting up tools
and methods for defining and designing products and quality assurance,
and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Career Opportunities
This program is more methods- than technology- oriented,
and seeks to respond both to the traditional concerns
of industrial firms and the new aspirations of consulting
firms. QSF engineers do not focus on one specific area
of activity. Their skills are appreciated in a wide range
of industries:
A
utomotive (PSA, Renault, Valéo…)
A
viation (Airbus, Safran Group…)
B
anking and Insurance (BNP Paribas, MAAF
Assurances…)
T
ransportation (SNCF, GEFCO…)
T
elecommunications (France Telecom…)
Food
Processing (Danone Group…)
... and of course in consulting and service firms.
QSF engineers will be in charge of:
Organizing and managing the quality of products or
production processes (management systems, standards,
costs, customer satisfaction, etc.)
Quality control using statistical tools
Quality optimization, during the design
or improvement phases
Assessing and improving the reliability of products or
production processes
Defining and implementing a maintenance policy
Ensuring the safety of products or production processes.
Jobs for Tomorrow
and the Future
Though most young QSF engineers start out as Product
or Systems Quality engineers in SME’s or major corporations, a number get jobs as consultants in Operational
Safety (engineering experts who often work with R&D
departments) or in Supply Chain Optimization.
QSF engineers are generally quickly promoted to senior
positions such as:
Environmental safety and quality manager
Quality Manager for products, suppliers, etc.
Engineering and quality tools expert working directly
with project teams
Consultant
Internal or external auditor in charge of measuring
discrepancies between practices and guidelines, and
accrediting the quality management system.
The Program
ORGANIZING QUALITY
International focus, enterprise and academic innovation
are the three watchwords of the engineering curriculum
at the Ecole des Mines de Nantes. During the program,
students will engage in situation scenarios, either
individually in a company, or in groups during
industrial field study exercises. The teaching faculty are
supported by professionals from the corporate world
who provide insight into actual requirements in
industry.
A Project with Virginia Tech
Specific to the QSF program is an option project
during which the French students work with students
from Virginia Tech to solve an industrial problem
submitted either by a French or US industrial firm.
Their assignment is to provide an operational solution
to an innovation problem for the firm in question.
Quality Management
Risk Management
Environmental Management
Quality of Services
Logistics
Production Management
Economic Strategy
DESIGNING SAFE SYSTEMS
Industrial system modeling
Operational Safety
Problem solving methods
Integrated Logistics Support
Essentially taking place during the last year of the
engineering cycle, the QSF option builds on the
instruction of the previous cycles with theoretical and
technical aspects centered on Industrial Engineering as
well as courses in Social and Management Sciences.
System Engineering
Robust Engineering
Project Management
INSPECTION AND MAINTENANCE
System Analysis Methods
Audit
Statistical Process Control
Maintenance optimization
Bruno Castanier,
Program Head.
E-mail: [email protected]
“The option offers an integrated and multidisciplinary vision of enterprise
management systems that takes into account socio-organizational and decisional
factors. The program integrates human factors and has recently incorporated
notions of environmental management and occupational hazard management.
Hence the quality-safety-environment trio is complete.”
Beyond Borders
There are numerous opportunities for the students to
develop their skills internationally. They can complete
an entire year of study in a foreign university with credit
transfer, perform a 3-month internship in a foreign
research lab or company, and carry out an option
project in collaboration with American students.
In terms of double degrees, QSF is a special
partner of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
also offers the opportunity to study at other
prestigious universities, including Shanghai Jiaotong
University (China), Universidad de Los Andes
(Columbia), Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal
(Canada), and Tec de Monterrey (Mexico). Finally,
the international dimension is emphasized by the
presence of students from other cultures (China, USA,
Columbia) completing the entire program in France.
Uniandes Bogota
Georgia tech Atlanta
SJTU Shanghai
Chalmers Göthenburg
EP Montreal
Institut Bauman
Moscou
UP Madrid
Tec Monterrey
Virginia Tech
Research
The QSF academic program is based on research topics
developed by the “Production and Logistics Systems”
research groups ( http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr/slp)
at the Research Institute in Communications and
Cybernetics of Nantes, (UMR CNRS 6597), whose
automation and industrial engineering department is
actively involved.
QSF engineers can get an introduction to research by
writing Masters theses supervised jointly with our foreign
partner institutions.
UF Rio de Janeiro
UF Espirito Santo
“A genuine junior consultant assignment”
Michel Baujard, aviation division of Thales
“Sébastien Roche? We’re still talking about him! In 2003, he came to do his
graduate project in the aviation division of Thales, one of the six divisions of
the corporation, which has 13,000 employees. The aviation division is managed
based on a customer driven continuous improvement system, and Sébastien’s
project consisted of a major effort to reduce the documentation being provided,
in particular to Airbus.
The mass of documents was huge, and they had to be analyzed one by one to
assess their added value and figure out where the duplications and overlaps
were coming from. Sébastien carried out a genuine junior consultant
assignment, helping the various actors reach an agreement, and then making
proposals. His idea was to change the way of thinking. Instead of depending
on the corporate in-house organization, he suggested setting up an adjustable
standard documentation based on a technical tree hierarchy. This resulted in
eliminating a great many useless or duplicate documents.
In 2006, another student from Nantes, Nicolas Chéreau, interned with us, and
he also performed work that was highly beneficial for the division. Again, in the
context of our improvement system, he helped organize in-house forums for
exchanging best practices in R&D. He was still an intern here when the forums
were held. Nearly 5,000 people from all the sites capitalized their experiences
in a database. He was able to see the real-life results!
In both cases, the students demonstrated great analytical and organization
abilities, all of course in a totally international context. The benefits to the
company were undeniable.”
Ecole des Mines de Nantes
La Chantrerie
4 rue Alfred Kastler
BP 20722
44307 Nantes cedex 3
France
Tél. : + 33(0)2 51 85 81 00
Fax : + 33(0)2 51 85 81 99
Site web : www.emn.fr
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par Goubault Imprimeur.
➤ Double degrees